1979: The new Toyota Supra provides the powerful pleasure

The Toyota Celica was a serious sales hit in the United States, at least in the areas that lacked rust and/or enraged Detroit autoworkers with sledgehammers, but its four-cylinder engine didn’t have the horsepower to be a real Datsun Z-car competitor. Starting in 1978, Toyota offered a stretched Celica liftback with a single-overhead-cam straight-six engine and named it the Supra.

The first Supras were sold for the 1979 model year in the United States, and this magazine advertisement describes the new car as a “fuel-injected, six-cylinder, plush, lush” machine. You got it!